Darned if You Do Read online

  But wait a minute: Inside the shop she could see a counter, and on top of it sat a gorgeous fuzzy shawl and a sweater knit in a complex pattern.

  Valentina drew a happy breath and went in.

  As the door opened, she heard a silly tune on what sounded like a toy organ. Startled, she paused to listen. Wasn’t that a song she recognized? She rather thought so but couldn’t identify it.

  From behind a spinner rack holding white cardboard squares of Very Velvet floss came a young man with blond hair and wide, innocent-looking blue eyes. He was dressed all in a medium brown, from his shoes to the thin, faintly shimmering sweater he wore. Silk? wondered Valentina.

  “May I help you?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for Betsy—uh—” Rats, she’d forgotten her last name.

  “Devonshire?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “She went to the post office to pick up a delivery. She should be back in a few minutes. Would you care to wait?”

  “Yes, thanks.” Casting about for something to say, Valentina asked, “Are you her husband?”

  The young man’s mouth fell open in surprised laughter. “Oh, my dear—!”

  Enlightened, Valentina laughed back. “I guess not,” she said.

  “Not that she isn’t a perfectly wonderful woman,” the man hastened to say. “But . . . que sera, sera. Meanwhile, is there something I can show you?”

  “I’m in town on . . . on business, I guess you’d say, but it’s turning out I’ll be doing a certain amount of sitting and waiting, and I need something to do with my hands . . .” She gestured eloquently.

  “I know just what you mean. Waiting to be waited on, it’s good to have some handwork with you. What kind of needlework are you most interested in?”

  “Well, I like to knit, but the needles are too long and the ball of yarn too bulky to fit in this purse of mine—I don’t want to have to buy a new knitting bag. I can’t afford needlepoint and I’m too fussed right now to focus on counted cross-stitch. I used to crochet, but I’m not sure I remember how.” She halted, embarrassed at this seeming attempt to anticipate and shoot down any suggestion he might make.

  But he didn’t seem to mind. He pressed a slim forefinger into the edge of his mouth, his head cocked a little sideways, and thought for a bit. Then he nodded once. “Crochet,” he announced. “Once you know how to crochet, you can pick it up again very easily. It’s just the thing. It will keep your fingers busy, and it takes just enough concentration to distract you from worry.”

  “But—”

  “Just make squares and stitch the best ones into a scarf or, if you end up staying a long time, an afghan.” He looked inquiringly at her.

  But she refused to be drawn into any discussion of why she was in Excelsior. “All right, then, crochet it is. What do you have that won’t empty my purse?”

  He went at once to one of the big baskets scattered around the shop and pulled out a ball of bright yellow worsted-weight yarn that had its shabby original label—the one that had surrounded it back when it was a skein—safety-pinned to it.

  “This is pure virgin wool,” said the young man. “Betsy brought her other cat down here last week and he got into the yarn basket and killed three skeins before she could stop him.”

  Valentina smothered a laugh. “‘Killed’?”

  “He was trying to disembowel them.” The young man made a scratching motion with his fingers, his eyes alight with amusement.

  Valentina released a laugh. Then she asked, “What do you mean, ‘other cat’?”

  “Here’s the usual cat.” He turned and gestured toward a chair at the far end of the long table in the middle of the room. Valentina took a step sideways and saw an enormous, mostly white cat lying on a powder blue cushion. Its head was raised, looking back at her with yellow eyes.

  “That’s Sophie. She’s hoping you have something edible to share with her.”

  Valentina spread her hands. “Sorry,” she said to the cat, and Sophie put her head down with a big, disappointed sigh.

  The young man said, “The disemboweler is a Siamese named Thai. After that yarn incident, he’s permanently banned from the shop.”

  “Small wonder. Now, how much is that beautiful yellow yarn?”

  He named a price she would have expected to pay for cheap acrylic. “But this is wool, right?” she said.

  “Yes, but it’s been washed, so it’s considered secondhand.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  He said, “You’ll need a crochet hook, too, right?”

  “Yes, of course. In fact, give me a pair of them, size E—I lose small things, especially when I’m traveling. And do you have a how-to book?”

  “We carry a pretty good selection.” He led her to a set of white box shelves that reached nearly to the ceiling and divided the front and back of the shop. About half the boxes held books and magazines; the rest held exotic and expensive yarns, magnetic needle minders, tubes of beads, tiny frames, and gadgets Valentina couldn’t identify.

  She was looking at Simple Crocheting by Erika Knight—a good-size book, profusely illustrated—when the door opened again. She turned to see a handsome woman enter wearing a royal blue trench coat and balancing a large box on one arm. Despite her youthful, curly blond hair, she looked to be in her middle fifties.

  “Here, Betsy, let me take that,” said the young man, hurrying forward to lift the box from her arm.

  “Thanks, Goddy,” said Betsy.

  Goddy?

  “Are you Betsy Devonshire?” asked Valentina, tucking the book under her elbow and coming toward her.

  “Yes,” replied Betsy.

  “I’m Valentina Shipp, and Leona Cunningham said I should talk to you.”

  “Leona called a few minutes ago,” Godwin broke in, as he was putting the box on the table. “She said she was sending a woman named Valentina over to talk to you. I told her you were out but would be back.” He gave Valentina a look of mild rebuke. “This lady didn’t tell me her name.”

  “You didn’t look like a Betsy,” Valentina shot back.

  “Well . . . no,” conceded Godwin, looking down at himself as if for reassurance. When he looked up, he had that mischievous look in his eyes again.

  Valentina couldn’t help it. She smiled. “You’re quite a character!”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” said Betsy, who was shrugging off her coat. “Let me hang this up,” she continued, heading for the back of her shop. “Then you can tell me what this is about.”

  “Do you want that book?” Godwin asked Valentina. “And these two hooks, size E?”

  “Yes, please,” said Valentina, joining him at a big old desk near one wall.

  He quickly added up the charges, and, with a sigh she carefully suppressed, she swiped her credit card to pay them. Everything else was a bargain, but that book wasn’t!

  He had just handed her a large paper bag printed with purple flowers when Betsy came back.

  “Now,” said Betsy, “what does Leona want of me?”

  “This is going to take a few minutes,” said Valentina. “It’s about my cousin, Tommy Riordan.”

  “Who?” said Godwin with a puzzled frown. Then his expression cleared. “Oh, Tom Take!” He drew up his shoulders and pressed the fingers of one hand against his mouth. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!” he mumbled, casting glances at both Valentina and Betsy.

  There was a painful silence. Then Valentina said, in a chilly voice, “Is that what he’s called around here?”

  “Yes,” asserted Betsy. “That’s what a lot of people call him. Not being mean, not really. And Tom’s not mean, either. We know he can’t help it. He doesn’t do it often and he doesn’t take valuable things; it’s more a nuisance. I understand that if you catch him in the act, he’ll give the object back.”

&n
bsp; Godwin, anxious to make good, said, “I heard that if you think he’s got something of yours and ask him if he’s seen it, he’ll say he thinks he knows where it is and will bring it back to you a day or two later.”

  Valentina’s ire melted. “When he was a little boy,” she confessed to the two of them now, “he came to stay with us twice, and when he went home, we’d go into his room to get our things back.”

  Godwin laughed. “So he was born like that!”

  Betsy said, “So why are you here? What is it that you want from me? Here, come and sit down. Would you like a cup of coffee? Or tea?”

  “No, thanks.” Valentina followed Betsy back past the box shelves, into another, larger room. Here the walls were covered with stitched models, most of them framed, each with a three-digit number in a lower corner. Below them, slanted holders of counted cross-stitch patterns lined the entire room, and the floor was scattered with spinner racks holding everything from pretty scissors to different kinds of floss. In the center stood a small round table covered with a white tablecloth embroidered with winter scenes: snow-laden trees, sledding children, cross-country skiers.

  Around the table were four delicate, pretty chairs with thin pink cushions on the seats. Betsy took one and indicated with a gesture that Valentina should take another.

  “This is such a nice place,” said Valentina. “Very cozy.”

  “Thank you.” Betsy looked inquiringly at her.

  Valentina took a deep breath. “Tommy’s my cousin. I’ve been talked into taking responsibility for his house. He’s going to be in the hospital for a long while, probably. He doesn’t think the house needs anything but a new roof. But it does! It’s in such bad shape that it might have to be torn down.”

  “I don’t imagine Tom is happy about this.”

  “No, he isn’t. But if I don’t try to take care of things, apparently the county will. And he suspects—so do I, really—that they’ll just send a crew in to throw everything away. Tommy says there are lots of valuable things in his house. And for all I know, that might be true. Those people might throw good stuff away with the bad—or, worse, steal the good stuff.” Valentina winced. “I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No, that’s a perfectly valid concern,” said Betsy. “I have heard garbage collectors find valuable things in trash cans all the time. And not all the things are returned to the people who threw them away.”

  “The main problem is that I’m not rich enough to hire people to help—that house is too much for me alone. I don’t know if you are aware of how awful the place is.”

  Betsy nodded. “Well, there have been some rumors lately . . .”

  Valentina smiled grimly. “Well, it’s probably even worse than you’ve heard. The house itself has something wrong with its foundation. The brick sills are bulging.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that! Was the foundation damaged when the tree fell on the roof?”

  “I think it’s been that way for a while. But before anyone can tackle that, the inside needs attention, and that’s something I’ve been asked to handle. I talked to James Penberthy—he’s Tommy’s attorney, and he manages Tommy’s trust—and he’s going to help me get an emergency conservatorship. Then he says I should try to line up some volunteers from here in Excelsior to help me sort things out. I stopped for lunch at the Barleywine, and Leona Cunningham said I should talk to you.”

  Valentina looked around the shop, and a frown slowly formed on her face. “You do know her, right?”

  “Yes, she’s a good customer.”

  “But why did she think you could round up some help for me?”

  “Probably because I can.” Betsy smiled. “Her place and mine are two of the biggest carriers of gossip in Excelsior. I have a group that meets here every Monday, and between them and the regulars at the Barleywine, we can get the word out very quickly.”

  “Would you be willing to do that?”

  “Of course. Why don’t you give me a way to contact you, and I’ll see what I can arrange. Would you be willing to come back here on Monday afternoon to talk to my regulars? You can tell us how many people you’ll need and what you’ll need them to do.”

  “Okay.” Valentina nodded, feeling a sudden sting behind her eyes. Betsy’s willingness to get involved was a huge burden off her shoulders. “I hope I’ll have the conservatorship all fixed up by then. Oh, thank you, maybe this isn’t going to be impossible after all!”

  Chapter Nine

  SEVEN members of the Monday Bunch sat around the library table in Betsy’s shop: Emily, Doris and Phil, Jill, Bershada, Cherie, and Grace Pickering, who was only there temporarily. This time Grace had brought her sister, Georgine, with her. Georgine was a knitter; she was working on a bright red mitten. She looked like her sister but was a little taller and not quite as slim, and her blond hair was cropped short, a contrast to Grace’s auburn locks, which tumbled in easy curls to her shoulders.

  Betsy sometimes took a seat at the table, and she did so now, allowing a few minutes for the group’s members to greet one another and bring out—and comment on—their needlework projects in progress.

  She was herself working on a needlepoint canvas of red and pink roses from a counted cross-stitch pattern. Instead of wool, she was using size three perle cotton. She hadn’t done any of the roses, with their leaves and buds, in the shop because counted cross-stitch was not her forte and the frequent changes of colors took all her concentration, but now she was doing the background in buff, using the basket weave stitch, which was easy.

  “That thing you’re stitching,” said Bershada. “I just love those colors, so rich. What’s it going to be, a pillow?”

  “No,” Betsy said. “It’s going on the seat of a chair.”

  “Girl, if I put something as beautiful as that on the seat of a chair, no one would be allowed to sit on it.”

  Betsy, who had slaved over the piece for many hours, was inclined to agree that no one of lower rank than the Queen of England was going to rest her bottom on the stitching. She had spent countless hours frogging (or ripping out stitches—“rip it, rip it, rip it,” hence the term); nearly as many hours as she’d spent stitching. But all she said was, “Thanks, it is nice, isn’t it?”

  The general sharing of needlework progress had subsided, and the gossip was about to begin, when Betsy spoke up again. “May I ask you all something?” she asked. “It’s important, about Tom Riordan.”

  Tom Take’s misfortune had been a hot topic since the night of the storm, and all eyes lifted to Betsy when she mentioned his name. “What about him?” asked Doris in her throaty voice.

  “His cousin is in town, and she’s been asked to clear out his house.”

  “By who? You?” asked Emily, not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

  “Tom didn’t ask anyone to do it, I’ll bet,” said Phil, grinning.

  “Not Tom,” agreed Betsy. “But his social worker and his attorney think that if this woman doesn’t take on the task, Hennepin County will—and they might not be as careful of his things as she will.”

  “His cousin is a woman?” said Bershada. “Does she look something like Tom?”

  “She looks a lot like him, actually. Why, have you met her?” asked Betsy.

  “Not to speak to, but I saw a woman standing outside Tom’s house last week, kind of looking it over, and she didn’t look happy with what she was seeing. I thought maybe she was a real estate agent. That house might be a mess, but it’s on a big lot only a block from the lake, and property values around here are staying nice and high.”

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  “And this woman looked like Tom?” asked Cherie.

  “Yes. Yes, she did. I almost went over to speak to her, but she was looking kind of mad, so I didn’t.”

  “That was probably her,” Betsy said. “Her name is Valentin
a Shipp. Leona sent her to me, because she thought maybe I could get some volunteers to help Ms. Shipp sort out the things in Tom’s house.”

  “Write my name down,” said Phil immediately. “I’ll do it for free. In fact, I’d pay her for a chance to get a close look at the inside of that house.”

  “No need to do that, Phil,” said Betsy, smiling. She sobered. “But this is a job for volunteers. There’s no pay involved. Ms. Shipp is far from wealthy. She drove here all the way from Indiana to help Tom, because he’s the last of her family.”

  Phil looked around the table. “What, I’m the only one who would like a chance to see just what Tom Take has piled up in there?”

  Tall, fair Jill already knew some of the details about what had befallen Tom Riordan, since she was married to Sergeant Larson, who’d been one of the first responders when the accident was reported. “Put me down, too,” she said now. “I wonder if that poor woman has any idea what she’s in for.”

  Betsy said, “She’s been inside the house, so yes, she has an idea. But she’s hoping it will only take a week.”

  “She’s a heck of an optimist, in that case!” said Phil with a laugh.

  Emily said, “I’m afraid I can’t volunteer more than one day, but I’ll ask at my church if anyone else will come.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Betsy said. “I’ll do that, too. And Leona is asking around as well. If we can get enough people, they can work in shifts, and maybe the cleanup will get done quickly.”

  “So you’re volunteering, too?” asked Jill.

  “I’m afraid not. I’m down to two part-timers right now, so I have to work more hours. But I’ll ask Connor.”

  “Oh yes, please do that!” said Jill.

  “Add me to the list,” said Doris, and Betsy added her name to the list she was compiling.

  “I can help out, too,” said Cherie.

  “What hat will you wear?” teased Phil.